What Does the Silk Road Seizure Mean for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin’s censorship-resistance means that the government cannot engage in prior restraint when it comes to financial transactions. They may be able to identify and punish parties to a transaction after the fact, but with Bitcoin they can’t prevent that transaction from happening at all, something they can do with traditional financial systems by putting pressure on payments processors like Visa and PayPal. This is a new and revolutionary development that remains intact even after one of the government’s most serious attacks on the deep web. The fact is that online black markets are the new normal, and realizing that should take the sting out of any crypto-anarchist’s grief for Silk Road.